You should probably preemptively ban me from the reading group. I have a tendency to join book clubs, not read the book, go anyway, and then amuse myself by picking fights about the book by totally making stuff up.
No, we want people like that in our reading group.
Were you following along for the last reading group? Because someone doing that would have so been an asset. And explain the lobster post to me, please.
It seems you push the lobster onto "the post."
I'm in for the book club, wherever it is.
The lobster is a symbol for the irretrievable past; weren't we all once sleek and pettable, and over time, don't we all become crustaceans?
I wasn't around in the days of the old reading group.
I don't 100% get the lobster post, either, but there was something quite lovely about it so I thought I would share.
I was in a reading club once which, happily, was more of a wine drinking club. Unfortunately I quit when it got bogarted by a couple of members, one of whom cried right around 10pm of every meeting (usually preceded by some comment on how her husband had never given her an orgasm), and another of whom would talk about how she missed her meds that day and then would describe either an orgy in which she'd participated recently and/or her latest suicidal ideations. Amusingly, she never actually referred to them as orgies. As a 'seven-way' maybe, but an orgy, never.
So what were you thinking of reading?
That's being decided now, moira. What do you want to read? It should be something difficult, so we could benefit by going through it slowly with other's feedback. in the earlier thread, most people preferred philosophy to difficult fiction.
Oh sure, I mention the idea twice and all of a sudden it's my schtick.
I think I might prefer difficult fiction - the stuff you're supposed to read but haven't, like Gravity's Rainbow, etc., but I wonder if that's a little too basic for this crowd. Philosophy has always daunted me, but mostly because I prefer my deep thoughts unplumbed. (Untrue; it's mostly because I just prefer fiction.)
Are we pretty well set on the genre being Western philosophy? Cause I could go for some Kierkegaard, and also for Nietzsche but not as strongly, and also for Blumenberg (has he been translated? Because I started "Höhlenausgang" and it was awesome but my Deutsche chops are not up to the task). Or if novels and poetry are part of the discussion then I could make some other suggestions.
I would be much more inclined to participate for difficult fiction. FWIW. No pressure.
Why do you hate me?
I'd certainly be up for difficult fiction. I wouldn't mind GR, actually, but my only concern about that is whether we'd really be able to keep it together for a book that long.
Amazon reckons that many works of Blumenberg have been translated, but not the particular one that interests me.
I'd leap at a chance to be schooled on Kant. But maybe Critique of Pure Reason would be too difficult for the amateurs and too old hat for the pros. Maybe Perpetual Peace would be topical?
And I would way prefer reading Mason & Dixon with the group to reading GR with the group. I speck most people here (75% maybe?) have already read GR and have their ideas about it a bit fixed.
I would like to read some philosophy, though perhaps leaning more toward political philosophy. Also difficult fiction. Things one should have read. Maybe recent Booker prize / pulitzer winners?
Also, I would try mightily to drink while participating, if only to make moira happy. I give of myself like that, you see.
I've only read parts of GR. I would not be into M&D. I couldn't finish it.
(usually preceded by some comment on how her husband had never given her an orgasm), and another of whom would talk about how she missed her meds that day and then would describe either an orgy in which she'd participated recently and/or her latest suicidal ideations. Amusingly, she never actually referred to them as orgies. As a 'seven-way' maybe, but an orgy, never.
Whatever happened to fellowship with your fellow man? Help. A. Brother. Out.
Isn't there some rule that you have have at least 12 people for an orgy?
I would be more interested in philosophy than fiction, but you should pick whatever will attract a critical mass.
I'd definitely be interested in some classic political philosophy.
BTW, shouldn't the title of this post be "Animate Dead (reprise)" so that we can tell the two posts apart if we have to refer to them?
TMK, I've already tried to read Mason and Dixon out of a sense of duty* and failed to get through it. Let's not make me do that again.
Kierkegaard made me cry when I first read him**, so I'm not excited about that prospect.
*Actually, as an attempt to impress that totally hott Cyprian model-turned-graduate-student at my undergrad university. That didn't work either.
**Okay, I was a doubting 15 year-old at the time, but it was seriously traumatic to read the Abraham-Isaac story over and over.
Ah, thanks slolernr. But how will we know? Bad typing?
I borrowed GR from a friend back in the fall and meant to get to it, but he freaked me out when he asked why I hadn't also borrowed the accompanying guide to GR. Good lord. There's a reader's guide?!
NickS, name some classical political philosophy. We should start nominating some specific works and then take a poll, maybe.
And I thought orgy was anything involving more people than could sit comfortably in a mid-sized sedan. Seriously, I don't want that many people in my living room, let alone in my hoo-ha.
how will we know?
Aren't there things that you would only do if drunk?
Good lord. There's a reader's guide?!
More than one. (At least Weisenburger and Fowler.) Which, for many people, makes the book too much like homework. I vote against, even though I myself like it.
GR needs a lot of annotation. But that's good. If we do fiction, we want it to be difficult.
22 -- I am in a similar position wrt M&D, I was thinking it might be fun to reread these several years after my failed dutylicious attempt. But I don't see any groundswell of support so I will be quiet about it now. If there's a significant body of people here who have not read GR or only read it in parts and want to read it now, yeah I'd be totally on board for that. Alternately it might be a lot of fun to take on some older literature like Middlemarch or something that I would be unlikely to get much out of on my own but might profit from with Mineshafty assistance.
"If we do fiction, we want it to be difficult."
Why?
Is anyone allowed to join this thing or do you need some sort of special invite? And if the latter how is one secured? I'm only an irregular commenter (damn job keeps interfering), but this sounds like fun.
I'm not picky about what we read (though the suggestion of classical political philosophy sounded intriguing).
It needn't be contemporary to be difficult. I nominate Flaubert and leave the title to the bartender.
I'd be up for philosophy, though it's daunting to chime in in a chatroomful of people whose dayjob it is to hash these things out. Some among us may have more literary training than others but I feel that the disparity is less appreciable than with philosophy when mixed company comes into play. Put another way, talking about fiction doesn't make me feel like a n00b.
30: I just think we'd get the most value-added from the reading group structure if whatever we read was the kind of thing that wasn't easy to understand at first pass. Especially since we're probably going to be going through it slowly. I can't see the value in picking through Middlemarch at the rate of a chapter a week. More straightforward fiction is the kind of thing you want to discuss having read the whole thing.
I actually haven't read Gravity's Rainbow, tho' it shames me to admit it. My bad Mason & Dixon experience makes me cranky about Pynchon, so I'm voting NO. I've also read Middlemarch too many times in too many seminars to be anything but boring and pedantic.
I vote YES on classic political philosophy because I think it might give us all a chance to be catty. What about Machiavelli?
Everyone's invited to the reading group, even lurkers. Also, I will be a total ridiculous noob if we do philosophy, but I don't mind.
33: Let's read something writtene in a foreign language. What could be more appropriate, at this time, than to read the Qur'an in the original Arabic?
Maybe this is redundant, but now I want to pose the question directly: to those who propose Dostoevsky, Eliot, Flaubert, how would we structure it? How much would we read before talking about it in the reading group? At what intervals would reading group "meetings" be structured. I can't envision how it would work.
Silvana and maybe Emerson will be able to read the Qur'an. I'll bet there's nothing we can think of that somebody here doesn't know, but that's the fun of it.
33: Oh is that how reading groups work? I never realized.
name some classical political philosophy.
First thought is not actually political philosophy, what about a section of Montaigne's Essays?
I've been wanting to re-read Machiavelli, but that might not be challenging enough (though, given the last experience, perhaps we should err on the side of less rather than more challenging).
I'd read anything by Hume. I haven't read Burke, but that would be potentially interesting.
We could read Edmund Burke along with the new biography of Robespierre.
I vote fiction, not philosophy. I won't read philosophy. I mean, sometimes I will, but I ain't joining no philosophy book club.
NO TO BURKE. Or, go right ahead, but I'll loudly declare that I'm not playing and then butt in offensively all the damned time.
Yeah I'm rethinking my allegiance to fiction here. Philosophy will be more fun. I'm not going to make nominations but will vote.
As for structure: why not one thread a week, in the main body of the blog? An index to the reading group posts could be on another page somewhere.
JM, why no to Burke? I barely know who any of these people are so I don't know what people tend to think about them.
Marius the Epicurean? Jude the Obscure? I'd like to read either the one.
Tia, I think it requires a despot like Ogged to get a bookclub started. I'm sure that if you just consider the input here and make a decision, we'll all consent.
I'll consider the despot route, but I don't really understand how online book clubs work, not having been around for the last one, so I do need the input.
I hate Burke but I'd be willing to (re)read him. I can pretend, Mark Steyn-like, that Hazlitt's and Albert O. Hirschmann's insights are my own.
JM -- I have no attachment to Burke, I was just throwing out names. We did agree on Machiavelli.
47: She seems to react that way to all books from her period.
I'm going to despotically rule out 19th century fiction until someone explains how we would set up the book club.
Some non-work books I have recently read, which I think might be the kinds of things that would work well in a book club:
Henry Hitchings, Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary
John Gray, Two Faces of Liberalism (Also, his Straw Dogs and False Dawn)
E. H. Gombrich, A Little History of the World
John Kenneth Galbraith, American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power
Huh, no fiction. My bad.
Also, I think these would work well, but not necessarily read in that Talmudic, chapter-by-chapter fashion: I think they would work best if everyone were told to have read them by a date certain.
33: Absolutely. I would use the same argument against Flaubert.
Maybe DeLillo's Underworld?
Hmm... apparently I'm in the modernish unapproachable fiction camp.
Tia, it's nothing against Burke. I like Burke! Burke is great! Burke would probably be an ideal choice for this crowd! It's not Burke, it's me.
Everyone does Fear and Trembling. Maybe you could try Philosophical Fragments instead -- or else you could do Repetition, which is both a philosophical work and a novel, and is also my sentimental favorite out of SK's work.
If that seems too easy, there's always Hegel's Science of Logic -- easily available auf Deutsche in Chicago and presumably in other major urban areas as well.
No, it's Burke.
Slol: I like several of those, but I think "philosophical fiction" would be best, hence my suggestions. How about Santayana's The Last Puritan?
I want to read Doctorow's The March, but I don't want to have the same old Civil War argument all over again.
I've never heard of Repitition. Is it readily available in decent English?
I actually wouldn't mind poetry. I basically can't get much out of it unless I'm in school and someone's forcing me to pay close attention; the reading group might have a similar function.
Is 62 a joke? I love epic poetry but I think an internet reading group would be the wrong place for it.
The "being and time" reading group failed because the book was way too hard to read. We should probably pick an easier book, especially for the first one. I suggest "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs which is both awesome and EZ to read.
Yeah, the Divine Comedy (or something similar) might be a good choice. I've never managed to get through it on my own.
...Actually I'm having a hard time thinking of any poetry that would benefit from being read in an online discussion group.
I have a desire to read some Erich Neumann at the moment, but am assuming Tia would be against it.
Why do you say that, TMK? It's good to haggle over.
I'm kind of liking the Montaigne idea. I just read the Wikipedia essay and the book sounds kind of oggedian and accessible.
67: well, Byron's Don Juan has a lot of cock jokes...
Instead of waiting until this goes the way of all online reading groups (that is, not with a bang but with a whimper), why not just pick Das Kapital and kill it from the get-go?
Repetition is in the same volume as Fear and Trembling in the Princeton edition of SK's works.
I'm cool with Montaigne. Florio? Cotten? modern? does it matter?
I'd get excited about reading Montiagne.
One advantage of the Essays is that we wouldn't have to commit to reading the whole book. We could just keep going for as long as it maintains people's interest and stop when we're tired of it.
We could go all relevant and read the Federalist Papers as a means of whipping ourselves into a frenzy of outrage at the news of the day?
I'll read anything -- I'd probably prefer philosophy to fiction, just because I read as much fiction as I need to on my own, but not so much with the philosophy. But Being and Time was distinctly over my head; I think I can ask that we settle on something easier to understand without narrowing the field too much.
62 was not a joke, though I've never tried reading epic poetry in an online reading group, and I acknowledge that it might not go well.
You can get Repetition in a volume with F&T.
I refuse to read any Kierkegaard other than Concluding Unscientific Postscript! What about a short novel, in four parts, like Knut Hamsun's Hunger?
Tia, "other then"? For shame.
I'm not going to give any more suggestions because I'll honestly read anything. Higher-order mathematics? Sure, why not. I'm really easy to please. Seriously easy to please. Like a premature ejaculator.
I could do Montaigne. In translation.
Montaigne's a pretty good choice. The only trick would be in choosing which essay to read first. One of the mainpage posters should probably have or acquire a sense of which essays are considered the interesting/important ones. I'd go and look at my copy, but apparently it's propping up furniture somewhere.
OK facilitator, get up to the easel and start writing the repeated suggestions.
I don't know what you're talking about, Ben.
The Earl of Rochester is one-stop shopping for poetry and cock jokes.
Why do you say that, TMK?
I dunno, the poetry discussion that has been most useful/fun for me, had involved sitting together in a room and listening to each other recite the words -- not much room for that on the internets. I could be wrong.
81: "On Solitude," "On Drunkenness," "On Experience" are classics.
I could do Montaigne. In translation.
Oh, come on, slol. Be a man.
A book club is exactly the way to read epic poetry. It can be devided nearly into the precis format Ogged set for B&T, which is a very, very good way to masticulate poetry in epic meter.
I vote Paradise Lost. Historically it is closer to us than the other epics; it has theology and politics impliciter and is based on a subject we're all more or less familiar with.
Hmm...I don't hear any loud objections to the Montaigne. We could just do it for a bit, like NickS said, and then move on to something different.
Paradise Lost is also something I'd be enthusiastic about.
I think Montaigne is a little bit lightweight for this crowd.
88 is the thinking behind 62. Milton is good. Dante is good. So would be most any other great epic poem, I think.
My only concern would be that most of us would have read most of these works. But they're deep enough to sustain a second reading, I think.
Rochester! Don Juan! Yay! In other words, if 53 is true, you will all have to choose between me and JM, because I *like* books from JM's period. Also, re. epic poetry, and in the same period, Paradise Lost is good book club material.
Can we at least do *some* unapprochable modern fiction? I'm okay with Burke. Montaigne, eh, but I'll do it if everyone else wants to. But if we do philosophy, the actual philosophers have to promise not to get mad at the lit-types reading it as literature. Jane Jacobs sounds good.
This is really a pretty useless comment, isn't it? Oh well, plus ça change.
I am a silly, silly person.
[edited by management for clarity]
Oh, come on, slol.
Hey, okay, I could, but I don't want to.
Be a man.
Sexist.
Sæmundar Edda is one-stop shopping for epic verse and foreign language. Teofilo could help us with the tricky bits.
What if we started off with just three Montaigne essays to get our book club feet wet, and then moved on to either PL or something else? It would be nice to pick a really small but worthwhile goal at first, to give us a feeling of accomplishment.
Especially as he was the 16th century's most famous blogger, Montaigne is a great idea.
Paradise Lost is also a good idea. Or maybe Gerusalemme Liberata.
Did a comment just get deleted? And why?
No, not deleted, but 94 was heavily edited. What happened?
If we do philosophy, I'm going to despotically make a rule that any references to any other philosophers must include context for the noobs like me.
It just got edited for clarity's sake.
I'm a serial lurker, but I'd just like to throw out "The Liberal Tradition in America" by Hartz. I think it would interface well with broader discussions and invite fruitful ramblings.
Urple, it's the Troll of Sorrow. If you have questions, email one of the bloggers, but let's not discuss it on blog.
I totally dig on Paradise Lost. Sounds like a winner to me.
100: We have a persistent and well-known troll whose every comment is being treated in that manner.
99/100 -- get with the program people.
I also support, in a highly lurkerish fashion, the Paradise Lost suggestion.
I really, really, really think it's best not to discuss this on the blog.
Oh, man, you guys are serious about Paradise Lost?
Got it - 108 is retracted. Wish I knew the backstory, but only because I'm curious; it's not a big deal.
For comment-linking purposes, shoudn't the editors be [redacting] rather than deleting? Or is this all happening in sufficiently real time that it doesn't really matter?
I'm sensing a lot of enthusiastic support for PL. Do we want to start with any Montaigne, or do we want to dive in to PL?
If you're going to edit, rather than delete, ToS's comments, you should turn them into affirmations of posters and commenters. For example, #94 could read, "Apostropher is ToS's hero!"
Uh, guys, please for the love of ogged see 110.
Montaigne & PL strike me as having the right level of difficulty.
It seems to me there's a tendency to set ambitions too high (first critique, say) and then everyone gets fed up or sobs quietly in the dark because the transcendental deduction is rough.
117 and 118 get it exactly right. (sobs quietly [albeit in the sunshine])
It's trying to take the transcendental deduction from net income that causes the sobbing, isn't it?
Sorry, Tia. Delete my comments as necessary.
WTF is the transcendental deduction?
This means I paid too much on my taxes again, doesn't it? Shit.
121: Is that blanket permission?
High on a Throne of Royal State, which far
Outshon the wealth of ORMUS and of IND,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showrs on her Kings BARBARIC Pearl & Gold,
Satan exalted sat, by merit rais'd
To that bad eminence;
Sweeeeet.
It's trying to take the transcendental deduction from net income that causes the sobbing, isn't it?
That, or eating the oysters.
Which shows you where I find my level, poetry-wise.
123: vBlanket acceptance. I assumed the posters already had the droit de blogguer.
The three essays I mentioned (by all means not the only ones worth reading) would be a good warmup for the group dynamic, something -gg-d (PBUH) might have been wise to provide before we jumped into B&T. I like to blame him for the fact I stopped reading, see.
Hey, The Walrus and the Carpenter is a good suggestion too! Or maybe the entirety of Alice!
Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral?
One of the Italian renaissance epics would be good. I've already read Ariosto, so the other might be preferable.
I'm a bit baffled that no one is calling for The Fairie Queene.
132: Presumably it's the opposite, given that one eats oysters alive and snails, not. However, they're both tasty.
Without having read all the comments, I second Kotsko's nomination of Repitition.
Snails are okay, but not great. Oysters, on the other hand, are divine whether eaten live or dead (fried).
I have a prejudice against the Faerie Queene. Which probably means I should re-read it.
I'm writing on the easel:
Montaigne
Paradise Lost
Burke
Kirkegard's Repetition
Do we come up and stick on dots?
Upon further reading, I would also be open for bwo's suggestion, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, but would gladly read many of the other titles being suggested.
137 -- the grill is also a rewarding way to cook oysters.
I've always wanted to read Paradise Lost, so here's a vote for that.
No Kirkegard. Unless someone wants to explain what's interesting about it.
I won't read Book I of the Faerie Queen again (Holiness? c'mon). Maybe Book VII.
Things mentioned thus far to which I'd be willing to lend my bad eminence:
Montaigne
Repetition or CUS
The Transcendental Deduction (A edition only, please)
Through the Looking Glass and Alice in Wonderland
Gravity's Rainbow
Middlemarch
Hazlitt (mostly because I picked up at a library sale Table Talk)
Hunger
Burke on the French Revolution
Things not mentioned thus far to which &c:
Tom Jones
The Recognitions or maybe some Gaddis I haven't read (JR or A Frolic of His Own or, technically if it's actually out, Agap? Agape).
Art and Illusion
I'm a bit cool on Paradise Lost even though I've never read it. Of course since I'm already in two reading groups (Don Quixote and Articulating Reasons, baby), and will be leaving the country in a few short months, perhaps the opinion of this severe old man should be esteemed at unius assis. However, my eminence is the baddest.
(B: how can you need someone to explain "what's interesting" about someone who wrote books titled The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness Unto Death?)
As I mentioned in JM's replacement thread, I vote for Paradise Lost, although Gravity's Rainbow also sounds good for similar reasons. I appreciate TMK's faith in me upthread, but I don't actually "know" any Old Norse so I doubt I'd be much help in a saga reading group (I do know an Icelandic graduate student who teaches it, though). I think last time we discussed this someone suggested Zarathustra, which I would also support since I bought a copy a while ago and should probably read it at some point. I also suggest Piers Plowman.
Montaigne is fine with me. As would be Machiavelli - and not just The Prince: I'm curious about his other stuff. Not so much Milton. I don't know that I want to read anything by someone whose name doesn't start with an M. So I guess Mill could be good too.
Burke would be fine, but I'd want to read him alongside all kinds of other stuff.
On the basis of this post, I nominate Jacques Pepin's The Apprentice.
Super Radmeister K
I'd like to hear more about your Knoten und Gruppen, IYKWIM.
someone suggested Zarathustra
<blush> reckon that was likely me.
I'd like to participate in the reading group, but I really really don't want to read Milton. Hath all herre reden chaucer already? He's difficult, appropriate for the mineshaft, and he could guest-blog! Or Beowulf. or Hazlitt--I read something short of his that was very amusing. In fact, yes to anything on His Eminence's list in #143
Pepin sounds fun. Has anyone here read Life: A User's Manual by Perec? Would it be reading-group-appropriate? B-Wo's suggestions mostly sound good. What do you mean B-Wo, by "if it's actually out"? Agap? Agape is certainly out and a fun read. Goes pretty quick but I imagine you could slow it down some with discussion. There is also (speaking of Mineshaft-themed books) The Tunnel by Gass but I don't know that any of us would make it to the end. (Never tried myself but I understand it takes some endurance.)
(Not only is it out, come to think of it it is remaindered.)
I hearby despotically declare that we're reading three Montaigne essays to get our toes wet, then we're reading Paradise Lost. Any objections?
I actually haven't read Chaucer (signed up for a course then dropped it); I could go for that. I have read Beowulf, but I'd be okay with doing it again. SCMT jokingly suggested the Qur'an upthread, but that might actually work (though there are serious translation problems to deal with). I'd suggest the Bible, but Kevin Drum would just make fun of us.
Any objections?
Nope, sounds good to me.
I'll happily participate as long as you're reading Montaigne, but I'm taking a sabbatical while you do Milton--I'd as soon hit myself over the head repeatedly with a big iron bar.
I like the idea of starting with Montaigne. Once we get our feet wet, I think that LizardBreath's suggestion to read the Federalist Papers is a good one.
160 -- would it be televised? You could probably make some money with that.
I agree with BG and LB about the Federalist Papers.
Now that you've made your despotic decision, Tia, maybe frontpage our assignment?
153: Pepin's book is fun, but I wasn't seriously nominating it. I just wanted to link to that post, mostly for the photograph. Naked chefs indeed.
Wait, wait, I was kind of joking when I said "any objections?" I really am going to be a despot, because someone's going to be unhappy with anything, and if the reading group goes well we can rotate through different kinds of stuff. I detected a lot of PL enthusiasm, it's the right difficulty level, and and it's well structured for our project.
There's still stuff to be discussed. There are different versions of the Montaigne right? Which do we read? Also, given that my understanding is that these are pretty straightforward, it probably doesn't make sense to assign anyone to a precis, so what should we do to get the ball rolling. Have people volunteer to write discussion questions? Is that too lame?
Also, it's worth thinking about reading group flava.
Here were Ogged's rules for the last reading group, and I think they need modification. 1-5 are fine, but we're keeping this blog on the main page, it *is* the cock joke and funny digression blog, and I think the reading group will be more fun if we just be our natural selves. If it seems like a thread has drifted hopelessly, we can start a new post. Obviously, reading group participants won't have site admin priveleges, but if someone wants to do a post about something, they could email me or any other blogger who says (s)he wants to help administer the reading group. My big concern is people dropping a lot of extratextual references. I don't think we should make any assumptions about what "everyone" has read. (I, for one, have never read PL.) It's one thing if you're just making a joke, but if you're trying to say something serious about the book it would be really, really helpful if you made an effort to provide context, at least in the form of a link (and the SEP is often not link enough, because it explains confusing philosophy in terms of other confusing philosophy).
Any other thoughts on how this should run?
(I don't think it's worth reading Chaucer w/o learning to pronounce Middle English, which is not a big deal, but it might be slightly too big of a deal for our reading group.)
Well, I'm going to be reading Montaigne in French, but I could poke around for a good, recent, online translation.
Okay, I'll just shout out my recs. I think we ought to start with "On Drunkenness," because that's good fun (ATM). Then "On Solitude" and finally "On Experience," since those are considered his heavyweight essays, and in that order, since he cites idea from the former in the latter IIRC and anyway "On Ex" is his last essay.
A precis format wouldn't work for these, but the iron-fisted despot Tia should force someone to make an introductory comment, just to get the ball rolling.
Why keep the reading group on the main page?
And despite their failure to provide for a good book club, all Ogged's rules are well considered. If Tia allows a thaw on cock jokes, the workers will never meet their quotas.
First, I think you're absolutely right to be the despot -- without someone in charge, this isn't going anywhere (in fact, the comment I spent twenty minutes trying to post last night when the site was plotzing was an impassioned plea for you or someone to take on the mantle of Reading Group Despot).
Second, on the edition -- does anyone here have any academic expertise on Montaigne and an opinion? If not, I'd just look on Amazon for a Penguin edition or something.
Third -- I would be in favor of a rather more focussed tone than we get here, but not of any drastic enforcement. Maybe you, or I, or any other poster could redirect non-book-related conversations that were really taking off back here -- put up a spinoff post?
Fourth -- I had the oddest blog-related dream last night: someone was staging the 'Ask The MineShaft' comment threads as an Off-Broadway play. You and the questioner were on one side of the stage, and the regular commenters were in a sort of bleachers on the other side.
Edition Questions: what are the good French editions? (I think I can take a few books a year out of the University libraries without paying.)
Are there editions in French with a facing English translation?
You can be a despot all you like, I think you should be a despot, I'm just sad I have no interest.
Okay, ac, the Milton's not too long though. We'll make sure to do something you and mcmc are excited about next.
Why keep the reading group on the main page?
For one thing, I don't know how to set up another blog on Moveable Type. For another, I think Kotsko or someone once suggested that online reading groups work better if they're on the main page of the blog. I have this instinct it might thrive more if it's more integrated with the rest of Unfogged.
Everyone interested in reading--or looking at--Montaigne in French should check out the link in 88. That resource looks pretty damned scholarly; you could just print out the essays under discussion.
I want to join. Alert me when it is decided what will be read. The best way to divert the discussion into nonsense is from within.
We could use the old Being And Time RG Blog -- it's still extant. But you might be right that more people will participate if it's on the main page.
Maybe pick reading group posts out with a different color title?
I'd like to second BG's question about a French/English facing page edition. Or maybe I should not be so lazy and look for it myself.
The Great Books use the 17c translation of Cotton, about 1685. I have Volume I in the Elizabethan John Florio, but only one of 'smasher's suggestions (solitarinesse) is in that volume. The Donald Frame translation of excerpts has solitude and experience but not drunkeness. I have 2 complete Cottons. Let's see what we get disregarding translations used, since we've got some who'll try it in French and some in historical English. If we think it important we can quote the language we're referring to.
Here's a bilingual edition. Does anyone have thoughts on this Donald Frame fellow?
Frame is sensible, modern American English, finished around WWII. It's a common version, and the one I read first. It's fine.
You know, it's all available online, French and English, so I think I'll just print it out.
I don't get the mainpage vs. supplementary blog discussion. We've always been able to ignore or laugh at off-topic comments in the more earnest threads. If people are actually doing the reading, the discussion will be just fine--even if apostropher is illustrating his points with lewd links.
Sure, if it's on the mainpage, we might accidentally attract people who actually know something about Montaigne and will BlasT us for our ignorance. If that happens, though, I suspect the Experts would go away after a drive-by. I think it'll be fine.
Wouldn't attracting people who know something about Montaigne be good? I mean, I would have thought of that as rather the point.
Alert me when it is decided what will be read.
Do you want a personal, text-specific alert? I suggest that someone sneak into text's house and write a memo on his forehead while he sleeps.
Except, does this solitude essay have a different title? I can't find it in the tables of contents to the online editions.
I would have thought the point was to talk about something besides piggishness and our collapsing social and political order.
It's the BlasTing part people might be nervous about, but really I'm saying that you should mainpage the reading group posts without too many special considerations or worries.
I hate those kinds of memos. I am never the first to read them, and they are often too short, and insulting.
A simple comment thread titled: Text, we are now reading [whatever Montaigne essay is chosen] and you may find that essay in [wherever place I may find it] will suffice.
Kay, nevermind, I found the solitude one on Gutenberg. What if we assign "Of Drunkenness" for not this coming Tuesday but the next, to give people time to order books if they choose, and thereafter do an essay a week. And maybe someone could be assigned to write an introductory comment or two or three discussion questions. Anyone want to volunteer?
Drunkenness? I can come up with some discussion questions on that.
I like the variant spellings; so I just bought the Random House 1949 edition of the Cotton translation. Only $3.00 from ABEBooks, with bonus underlinings and marginalia.
(Plus if memory serves I have the Frame translation sitting on a bookshelf at home, from a Core Curriculum class of my youth. No variant spellings though.)
Becks should blog on drunkenness.
Sorry, I meant that Becks should Becks-blog "On Drunkenness."
I think I have a copy of the Frame translation as well.
I probably won't participate in the PL discussion when that happens. I've been wanting to try PL again, but it was a lot of work when I tried it before (and difficult for me because I have absolutely no religious background or references).
My main memory of trying to read PL is that it got easier once I started to train myself to look for the ending of sentences. I would start to think, "this doesn't make any sense, but that's only because I'm still in the middle of a sentence. Once I reach the end of the sentence (which is halfway down the page) I can figure out how all of the clauses fit together."
TMK: I didn't know it was out, ok? Sheesh. I'd second the Perec except it seems Tia's gone ahead with her crazy Miltonic schemes.
Don't mean to be all francophone, really. When y'all were translating that French passage the other week, I thought everyone was better than I would be. All my friends make fun of my bad French, actually, saying, "Weren't you a French major?"
I wish to beg the non-Milton people to at least *try* it. If I may modestly say, I teach it regularly, and ime even 18 year olds usually find themselves really surprised into finding it a great text. Really. It's fabulous.
Why assume the non-Milton haven't read it?
I already said I haven't read it, and really, whose else opinion matters?
202: Well, I don't, actually--I thought about that while writing the post. But of course I assume y'all haven't read it with a good discussion group, b/c I found it boring as shit as an undergrad, and yet my undergrads love it.
At least books 1-4 and 9. Skip the god stuff, which is legitimately pretty dull.
Skip the god stuff, which is legitimately pretty dull.
Great fodder for Mark Twain, though.
But what I should have said, of course, is I'm honestly sorry if I sounded like a condescending ass. Call it a blind spot: I adore PL, and can't imagine anyone *really* disliking it. I*'m sure dislike of Milton has to be based on misunderstanding, or bad influences, or *something*.
I think 91 is a better tone for addressing Unfogged people, even if they are philistines. But it's not dislike on my part, just I've read it two or three times, once very closely for something I was trying to write, and life is short.
Well, I don't think people are philistines for not having read X or Y book. God knows there are thousands of "great works" I haven't read.
Um, hyperbole? Don't worry about it. I'm sure if you begin all future comments, "O wise and all-knowing Unfoggetariat..." all will be well.
Bitch, I can't believe you're standing up for that creep! Sure, his writing is magnificent, but come on, it's like taking a long, long bath in eau de patriarchy. I've read it once, and that's enough. Convince me that the description of Sin and her foul brood at the gates of hell is not the quintessential misogynist nightmare. Eeeew! In general I'm not in favor of ahistorical critiques of great literature, but for Milton I make an exception. I don't find him boring at all. I find him vile.
Ah, but then there's the whole 19th century women writers as daughters of Milton/engaging with the legacy of Eve thing.
I'd be very grateful if someone would give me a couple of recommendations for printed versions of Montaigne. I don't like reading serious stuff online. I also don't have a printer, so I don't feel like spending the mney to print out am pm;ime text. I do, however, have access to Widener, so I can
borrow almost any edition for free.
Penguin puts out an edition of his complete essays.
From an amazon customer review (scroll down):
The Penguin/Screech edition includes the original and a translation of all Montaigne's foreign language quotations. The vast majority of these are in Latin; so, if you know some Latin, this is helpful. It also includes very helpful notes on obscure literary and historical issues, which provides for greater understanding. However, if you read the introduction and Screech's notes carefully, you will realize he does have an agenda. Screech plays down Montaigne's skepticism and tries to portray Montaigne as being more religious than he was.
As to the Stanford/Frame edition, its translation is much closer to the original French than Screech's. If you put the French text and Frame's translation side by side, you'll see what I mean (even if your French is pretty weak like mine). And, Frame does not play down Montaigne's skepticism - he lets Montaigne speak for himself. But, Frame's translation does have some flaws. It does not include the original for foreign language quotations. And, when Frame translates Latin poetry, he almost always makes it rhyme even when the original Latin does not rhyme. I find this jarring and not true to the original. Frame also does not include any helpful notes.
It also looks like the Frame translation gets assigned in courses a lot. On older translations, there's this:
In translating Montaigne, Cotton was at a disadvantage, of which he himself was wholly unconscious. He followed in the footsteps of a far greater adept in the difficult art, John Florio. Florio had all the virtues, save accuracy. If his book fails to represent the style of Montaigne, and not infrequently distorts his meaning, it is none the less a piece of living prose. Perhaps, it tells you more of Florio than of Montaigne; but it has that enduring quality, character, and it is unlikely that fashion will ever drive it from the minds of admiring scholars. Cotton’s version is of other stuff. Though not always correct, though never close-knit as is the original, it is more easily intelligible than Florio’s, and gives, may be, a clearer vision of the French. That, indeed, was Cotton’s purpose. “My design,” says he, “in attempting this translation was to present my country with a true copy of a very brave original.” Both translators use too many words for their purpose, Florio because he delights in the mere sound of them, Cotton, because he had not acquired the gift of concise expression, because he did not always know how to discard the tiresome symbols which encumber his sentences as with pack-thread. Florio, on the one hand, wrote like a fantastic, to whom embroideries were essential, Cotton, on the other, wrote like a country gentleman, who, after a day’s fishing, turned an honest penny by the pursuits of scholarship. The one lacks precision, the other distinction, and each man will decide for himself which he prefers.
I believe Shakespeare read Florio and Emerson read Cotton.
211: Well, of course he's violently misogynist. But he writes beautifully, and his misogyny (like the misogyny of most intelligent people) is quite interesting--as well as influential. A lot of my favorite writers are violently misogynist. Hell, a lot of my favorite *woman* writers are pretty misogynist--look at Charlotte Bronte's incredible disdain for "feminine" weakness, for example. I think it's probably extraordinarily difficult to be a successful artist without also having a fairly well-developed misogynist streak.
I think it's probably extraordinarily difficult to be a successful artist without also having a fairly well-developed misogynist streak.
Um, why?
Oh, because so many of the things required to be successful and/or a functioning artist--alone time, a ruthless sense of one's own entitlement to same, a sense of discipline, competitiveness, etc.--are inimical to "feminine" qualities like unselfishness, consumer materialism, giggliness, whatever. It seems to me that the route to really focusing on one's vocation requires a kind of rejection of a lot of things that we code as female. And I think that this happens even, or maybe especially to strong women--we often pride ourselves on being "unfeminine" in certain ways, which I think demonstrates that we have a certain disdain for "femininity."
Of course, this all said with an acknowledgement that weakness isn't *intrinsically* a quality of women; but it's so strongly gendered that I think it's pretty much impossible to disdain weakness without suffering from a certain internalized misogyny as part of the package.
Oh, and also, a lot of what we think of as "good" art is art that's pretty explicitly about "male" things--action, the public world, "ideas"--rather than "female" things like domesticity or whatever. It's one reason people downgrade Austen sometimes, or disdain "chick lit" or used to think of portraiture as less important than history painting, or whatever.
because so many of the things required to be successful and/or a functioning artist--alone time, a ruthless sense of one's own entitlement to same, a sense of discipline, competitiveness, etc.--are inimical to "feminine" qualities like unselfishness, consumer materialism, giggliness, whatever.
This is a cultural construction of femininity, as you point out in a later post, and one does not have to be a misogynist to reject it. It's a misogynist cultural construct, in fact, that attributes qualities men find threatening, trivial, or simply inconvenient, to women, so that they don't have to experience them in themselves. And that's why men make fun of nellies, BTW. Bronte's rejection of the feminine is part of her attempt to transcend the narrow role her society prescribed for her as a woman, and if she wasn't entirely clear-sighted, well, she had almost no one to help her maintain clarity, and, as women were often the enforcers of the cultural norms of femininity, it's no wonder she found them irritating.
Milton is one of the great architects and rationalizers of the misogynist world-view against which Bronte rebelled. Milton's writing is laced with such a visceral, sexual, disgust for women that I just can't get past it. People call DW Griffith a great artist, but I wouldn't expect an african-american to enjoy watching Birth of a Nation. I hope the day comes when people feel the same way about Milton.
Die, patriarchy,die!!!11!! Sweep Milton into the Rubbish Bin of History!!!.
anyway I don't want to read him again.
Also, I think it would be far more accurate to say that being a great artist requires a well-developed selfish streak, rather than a misogynist streak. This brings me back, trivially, to Art School Confidential, and the successful alumnus who was such an asshole, and argued that everyone wanted to be him so they could be an asshole too. When, really, everyone needed to be an asshole so they could become him, that is, a successful artist.
Oh, and also, a lot of what we think of as "good" art is art that's pretty explicitly about "male" things--action, the public world, "ideas"--rather than "female" things like domesticity or whatever. It's one reason people downgrade Austen sometimes, or disdain "chick lit" or used to think of portraiture as less important than history painting, or whatever.
All this shit is Milton's fault! Die, Milton, Die!!! Oh.
Anyway, the reason I despise chick-lit is that I define it as literature by and for women that reinforces a misogynist construct of femininity through weakly attacking and finally capitulating to that construct, even though other points of view have become possible. Which is why it's a contemporary phenomenon, and why austen and bronte don't qualify.
[W]oudn't expect an african-american to enjoy is a bit broad. I would expect an intellectual, literary or film student to be able to separate storytelling, artistic vision, etc. from message. Context is everything. Despising Woodrow Wilson's role in sponsoring the movie, in creating the cultural moment, is useful new knowledge, for example. But a work of art needs to seen with double, or maybe triple vision. Triumph of the Will is an obvious example. So is PL, still a monument after more than three centurys of at least ambivalent, if not hostile reading.
224: And I would expect such an intellectual, lit or film student to be able to do this as well, but I would be surprised if such a person watched the film for pleasure, which would be my reason for joining a book group.
So is PL, still a monument after more than three centuries of at least ambivalent, if not hostile reading.
So far. I think Leni Reifenstahl belongs in the dustbin of history too. She's not good enough to overcome her ideological basis. But it's easier to forgive the talented proponents of a pernicious but failed ideology than perhaps the leading literary proponent of an ideology that continues to injure me.
Look, I wanted to like Paradise Lost--Satan is cool, the language is fantastic, etc. I just couldn't stand it. It made me ill. I realize that my remarks here are hardly nuanced, but at any rate there are plenty of other writers to whom I can apply my double or triple vision.